SALISBURY will be the talk of the art world next year when a John Constable exhibition is staged at the city’s museum.
The summertime show is being organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the artist’s arrival in Salisbury. His visits to his friend John Fisher, the then Bishop of Salisbury, are widely accepted as inspiring some of his greatest paintings.
The Constable & Salisbury exhibition will see a multi-million pound collection brought together from both private owners and major art museums.
A final list of Constable’s paintings is still to be confirmed, but the show starting in May next year will include some of the artist’s most important work including several depicting the cathedral and the Harnham Water Meadows.
Richard Morgan, who has led a committee of art enthusiasts in developing the project, announced the three-month exhibition this week.
“This will be a 50-piece collection never seen before. It is work that will be gathered from the leading British galleries and others including the Fitzwilliam in the USA, National Gallery Washington and the Louvre in Paris.”
He was guest speaker at a garden party held by Salisbury law firm Wilsons in the grounds of the museum.
Mr Morgan added: “Museums can change places, just as we have seen in Liverpool and St Ives, and we are planning great changes in this museum.”
He said thanks in part to funding from the English Heritage Lottery Fund they hoped to radically change Salisbury Museum and the Constable exhibition was part of this.
Stephen Oxley, senior partner at Wilsons, said his firm had a tradition of supporting the arts in the city and they were delighted to be a sponsor of this project. “We have worked with the museum and its people for many years and when they approached us in 2008 with an idea from Lord Congleton to put on an exhibition, the likes of which had never been done before, we jumped at the chance to be involved.”
Adrian Green, director of Salisbury Museum, said: “It is almost impossible to view Salisbury Cathedral without thinking of Constable, therefore it is surprising that there has never been a major exhibition of his work in the city.
“As an archaeologist I particularly find Constable’s lesser known views of Old Sarum and Stonehenge evocative. One of Constable’s final exhibits at the Royal Academy was a magnificent watercolour of Stonehenge, shown there in 1836, which will be a major highlight of the exhibition for me.”
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